Cajun Music
Cajun music has a long and complex genealogy. French
people who settled in Acadia, Nova Scotia,
preserved a musical heritage rooted in medieval France. After their
expulsion by the British in 1755, those seeking refuge in subtropical
south Louisiana apparently carried no instruments, though they had
obtained fiddles by the 1800’s. The exiled Acadians performed not only
old compositions that had survived the expulsion, but also composed new
tunes, often concerning themes of death, loneliness, and ill-fated love
— a reaction to their harsh exile and rough frontier experience.

In Louisiana the Acadians
shortly began to encounter and intermarry with other ethnic groups,
fostering their evolution into a new ethnic group - the Cajuns. Creoles of African descent exerted a major
influence on the Cajuns' developing music. Late in the 1800’s local
merchants imported affordable, durable accordions, which spurred the
instrument's rise in popularity among Cajun musicians. In 1928 phonograph
companies began to record Cajun music in an effort to sell more players.
Standard versions of classics like Allons à Lafayette,
Hip et Taïaut and Jolie Blonde emerged from these
early commercial recordings.

During the 1920s & ’30s, Cajuns experienced a period of
increased Americanization, prompted largely by the discovery of oil in
south Louisiana
and the building of new highways. These factors led to an influx of
Anglo-American workers with a love for country & western music. (In
addition, some Cajuns moved to southeast Texas, where they found jobs in
area oilfields and refineries.) Reacting to these new influences, Cajuns
emulated Anglo-American string bands, highlighting the guitar and fiddle
at the accordion's expense. Indeed, the accordion practically disappeared
from Cajun music between 1935-1950. At this time, Cajuns added the steel
guitar, bass, drums, and even banjos and mandolins to their lineup.

By the late 1940s, however, the accordion again dominated
Cajun music, resurrected by accordionists like Iry LeJeune, Lawrence
Walker, and Nathan Abshire, and by war veterans seeking relief in
"old-time" music. Although the guitar and fiddle receded to backing
roles, Cajun groups kept the steel guitar, upright bass, and drums, all
remnants of the string-band era. The accordion's return, however,
corresponded with the arrival of two increasingly popular national genres
— rhythm & blues and rock 'n roll -represented in South Louisiana by the
"swamp pop" sound. Cajun music appeared to many on the verge of
extinction.

Then, in 1964, Cajun musicians (Dewey Balfa) appeared to
critical acclaim at the Newport Folk Festival. This helped to trigger
the "Cajun revival." At the same time, young Cajun musicians like Michael
Doucet and Zachary Richard were pushing the limits of Cajun music,
combining it with other sounds in a way similar to swamp pop musicians in
the 1950s. During the early to mid-1980s, Cajun music (as well as zydeco)
experienced a worldwide boom in popularity that continues to the present.

Cajun
Instrumentation
Button Accordion, fiddle, triangle (aka ’tit
fer, bostrang), guitar (sometimes slide guitar/peddle steel),
bass, drums. Often, the accordion player can also play the fiddle, and
some of the hauntingly beautiful older tunes feature “twin-fiddling” with
no accordion.

Cajun music has typically always been played as music for
dancing – not just for listening… After the accordion was imported and
available in the United States, it
became a great asset for Cajun bands because, unlike the fiddle, it could
be heard over the noise of the dancers feet, in the era before
amplification.

6-ct two-step - quick/quick slow, slow - travels around the line-of-dance – this is
known as “Mamou Two-Step,” and is the same thing as Texas or C&W Two-Step.

Mamou Jitterbug – This is basically an adaptation of single-rhythm swing dancing, done in
the center of the dance floor, leaving the perimeter open for the
traveling dancers to use. It has the same count as the Mamou Two-Step -
quick/quick slow, slow – and the quick/quick is equivalent to the
“rock-step” in Swing dancing.

Cajun Jitterbug
- Traditional Cajun Jitterbug features a “hobble step” alternating feet
like you are stepping on and off a curb, and lots of underarm turns
popular with C&W dance.

Waltz (3-beats) Cajun or zydeco waltz is generally a simple progressive waltz
that travels around the “line of dance” of the dance floor. A Mamou-waltz
variation actually features the Mamou two-step footwork pattern, and you
can count it “step, step, step / hold, step, hold”.

Zydeco
Music
Zydeco is a popular accordion-based musical genre - the
blues and dance music of Louisiana Creoles, the French-speaking blacks of
the prairies of south-central and southwest Louisiana. Contrary to
popular belief, it is not Cajun in origin. Rather, zydeco is the music of
south Louisiana’s “Creoles of Color,” who borrowed many of zydeco’s
defining elements from Cajun music. (In turn, Cajun music borrowed many of
its traits from Creole music.)

The word zydeco
(also rendered zarico, zodico, zordico, and zologo) derives from the French
expression les haricots,
meaning "beans." Folk etymology holds that the genre obtained this name
from the common Creole expression Les
haricots sont pas salés ("The snap beans aren’t salty"). This
phrase has appeared in many Creole songs, and serves as the title of a
popular zydeco recording (also called "Zydeco
est pas salé"). Les
haricots sont pas salés can be considered a lyrical metaphor
for difficult times: in the past, Creoles seasoned their food, such as
beans (les haricots), with
salted meat — when times were bad, salted meat became too expensive, which
explained why "the beans aren’t salty."

The roots of Zydeco are found in jure, a form of hand-clapping
and foot-stomping used by black field hands to pray and give thanks. By
the turn of the century, when instruments became available, many of the jure songs had adopted secular
themes. This music was called LaLa
or la musique creole and
was popular at rural house parties in southwest prairie towns like Eunice
and Mamou (perhaps best represented by the recordings of Creole
accordionist Amédé Ardoin.)

Zydeco is actually the most modern form of Creole music
from Acadiana, and it first appeared after World War II, when Creoles
became influenced by the rhythm, blues and jazz that was heard on radio
and juke boxes. The mixture of rural
LaLa and urban black music gave birth to a genre that the world
enjoys today as Zydeco, when pioneers of the genre like Clifton Chenier
and BooZoo Chavis combined more traditional sounds with new R&B elements.
In 1954, BooZoo Chavis had the first recording of modern zydeco with Paper in My Shoe on Folk-Star
Records. The song was a regional hit, but a dispute over royalties
prompted Chavis to leave the music industry. He did not return until the
mid-1980’s when he produced string of hits that helped spark a Zydeco
revival that continues today.

Zydeco has evolved considerably over the decades, and now
draws on pop music sources like soul, rap, and even reggae. It also is
increasingly performed in English, instead of in its original Creole
dialect. And, oddly, it generally is regarded as "party music" — even
though early zydeco drew heavily on "low-down" blues elements, as
demonstrated by Clifton Chenier’s repertoire. Zydeco frequently appears
in movies, TV, and commercials - even more so than Cajun music, which,
unlike zydeco, has retained much of its traditional flavor. It has
attracted a loyal worldwide outside Louisiana, as
demonstrated by the large numbers of zydeco dancers on the east and west
coasts. Despite its commercialization (and Americanization), zydeco
remains a relevant cultural expression for the Creoles of Acadiana.

Zydeco
Instrumentation
Zydeco’s instrumentation centers around an accordion and a
rubboard or frottoir (originally a domestic washboard), now made of corrugated metal worn like
a vest. The frottoir is scratched usually with spoons and used to provide
rhythm. Generally, button accordions are played (although some musicians
like Buckwheat Zydeco and CJ Chenier play piano accordion exclusively).
The other instruments are guitar, electric bass and drums.

Zydeco
Dancing Traditional zydeco dancing is done in closed position, with
an 8-count footwork generally counted slow/quick/quick, slow/quick/quick
with footwork: step pause/step/step, step pause/step/step – each of the
steps is a weight shift from side to side The dance does not travel around
the dance floor. “Club style” zydeco features the same footwork done in
open position, with a variety of lead & follow improvised variations.
Waltzes are also occasionally played by zydeco bands, and you can do a
Cajun waltz for these. In Lousiana, zydeco dancer attire is often jeans
and cowboy boots. Source for Cajun & Zydeco Music Description: Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture